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Underworld (1927 film)

August 21, 2023

For other uses, see Underworld (disambiguation).

Underworld (also released as Paying the Penalty) is a 1927 American silent crime film directed by Josef von Sternberg[1] and starring Clive Brook, Evelyn Brent and George Bancroft. The film launched Sternberg's eight-year collaboration with Paramount Pictures, with whom he would produce his seven films with actress Marlene Dietrich. Journalist and screenwriter Ben Hecht won an Academy Award for Best Original Story.[2]

Underworld
Film poster
Directed byJosef von Sternberg
Written byBen Hecht
Charles Furthman
Robert N. Lee
Produced byHector Turnbull
B. P. Schulberg
StarringClive Brook
Evelyn Brent
George Bancroft
Larry Semon
Fred Kohler
CinematographyBert Glennon
Edited byE. Lloyd Sheldon
Distributed byParamount Pictures
Release date
  • August 20, 1927 (1927-08-20)
Running time
80 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageSilent (English intertitles)

Plot

 
 
Left: "Bull" Weed (George Bancroft) in shootout with the police. Right: "Feathers" McCoy (Evelyn Brent), "Rolls Royce" Wensel (Clive Brook). "She recognizes the seriousness of his personality."[3]


Boisterous gangster kingpin 'Bull' Weed rehabilitates the down-and-out 'Rolls Royce' Wensel, a former lawyer who has fallen into alcoholism. The two become confidants, with Rolls Royce's intelligence aiding Weed's schemes, but complications arise when Rolls Royce falls for Weed's girlfriend 'Feathers' McCoy.

Adding to Weed's troubles are attempts by a rival gangster, 'Buck' Mulligan, to muscle in on his territory. Their antagonism climaxes with Weed killing Mulligan and he is imprisoned. Awaiting a death sentence, Rolls Royce devises an escape plan, but he and Feathers face a dilemma, wondering if they should elope together and leave Bull Weed to his fate.

Cast

Background

Josef von Sternberg's brief tenure as director at M-G-M was terminated by mutual consent in 1925 shortly after he walked off the set of a Mae Murray vehicle The Masked Bride. The film was completed by director Christy Cabanne.[4][5][6]

Sternberg's next project was an assignment by Charlie Chaplin (United Artists) to write and direct A Woman of the Sea starring Edna Purviance. This episode also ended badly: the film was never released and Chaplin felt compelled to destroy all film negatives. As Sternberg sardonically quipped in his 1965 memoir Fun in a Chinese Laundry, "It was [Edna Purviance]'s last film and nearly my own."[7][8]

Sternberg accepted a contract offer from Paramount Pictures in 1926, with the humbling condition that he was demoted to the role of assistant director. He was quickly assigned to reshoot portions of director Frank Lloyd's Children of Divorce. His work was so outstanding that the studio awarded him with a project of his own. The result was his most famous film to date of his career -Underworld. The film would "establish Sternberg in the Hollywood system."[9][10][11]

Production

 
George Bancroft (left) and Evelyn Brent

Underworld is based on a story by Ben Hecht, a former Chicago crime reporter, and adapted for screenplay by Robert N. Lee with titles by George Marion Jr. It was produced by B. P. Schulberg and Hector Turnbull with cinematography by Bert Glennon and edited by E. Lloyd Sheldon.[12] Sternberg completed Underworld in a record-setting five weeks.[13]

The gangster role played by George Bancroft was modeled on "Terrible" Tommy O'Connor, an Irish-American mobster who gunned down Chicago Police Chief Padraig O'Neil in 1923 but escaped three days before execution and was never apprehended.[14]

Paramount Pictures, initially cool towards the production, predicted the film would fail. Initial release was limited to only one theater, the New York Paramount. The studio did not provide advance publicity. Writer Ben Hecht requested (unsuccessfully) to have his name taken off the credits, due to the dismal prospects for the film.

Reception

Contrary to studio expectations, the public response to the New York screening was so positive that Paramount arranged for round-the-clock showings at the Paramount Theatre to "accommodate the unexpected crowds that flocked to the attraction."[15]

"No director in the history of cinema can match Sternberg's preoccupation with the harmonies of hand signals ... to light a cigarette, to grasp a coffee cup, to fondle one's furs is, for Sternberg, equivalent to baring one's soul."

—Andrew Sarris, from The Films of Josef von Sternberg (1966).[16]

Time felt the film was realistic in some parts, but disliked the Hollywood cliché of turning an evil character's heart to gold at the end.[17]

Underworld was well-received overseas, especially in France, where directors Julien Duvivier and Marcel Carné were deeply impressed with Sternberg's "clinical and spartan" film technique. Filmmaker and surrealist Luis Buñuel named Underworld as his all time favorite film.

Paramount, overjoyed at the film's "critical and commercial success" bestowed a gold medal and a $10,000 bonus on Sternberg.[18][19] Ben Hecht won the Academy Award for Writing in the 1st Academy Awards ceremony in 1929 for his work on this film.[20]

In 2008, the American Film Institute nominated this film for its Top 10 Gangster Films list.[21]

Theme

Sternberg has been credited with "launching the gangster film genre."[22] Critic Andrew Sarris cautions that Underworld is "less a proto-gangster film than a pre-gangster film" in which the criminal world of the Prohibition Era provides a backdrop for a tragic tale of a "Byronic hero" destroyed, not by "the avenging forces of law and order" but by the eternal vicissitudes of "love, faith and falsehood."[23]

Journalist Ben Hecht's influence appears in the phony flower shop operation and killing of "Bull" Weed's archenemy, "florist" Buck Mulligan, evoking the 1922 real-life murder of kingpin Dion O'Bannon by the Tony Torrios mob.[24] Funeral hearses also abound in the film, notorious as capacious conveyances used to conceal criminal activities and personnel in Chicago. Despite these contemporary references, Underworld does not qualify as "the first gangster film" as Sternberg "showed little interest in the purely gangsterish aspects of the genre" nor the "mechanics of [mob] power."[3][20] Rather than invoking contemporary social forces and inequities, Sternberg's "Bull" Weed is subject to "implacable Fate", much as the heroes of classical antiquity.[25][26] The female companions to the outlaws are less gangster molls, addicted to violent men, but protagonists in their own right, who induce "revenge and redemption." The genre would only be properly established in such film classics as Little Caesar (1930), The Public Enemy (1931), Scarface (1932), High Sierra (1941), White Heat (1949), The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and The Killing (1956).[3][27]

Film critic Dave Kehr, writing for the Chicago Reader in 2014, rates Underworld as one of the great gangster films of the silent era.[28] "The film established the fundamental elements of the gangster movie: a hoodlum hero; ominous, night-shrouded city streets; floozies; and a blazing finale in which the cops cut down the protagonist."[29][30]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Progressive Silent Film List: Underworld". silentera.com. Retrieved September 24, 2011.
  2. ^ "The 1st Academy Awards (1929) Nominees and Winners". Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Retrieved May 19, 2019.
  3. ^ a b c Sarris, 1966. p. 15
  4. ^ Sarris, 1966. p. 12
  5. ^ Baxter, 1971. p. 34
  6. ^ Weinberg, 1967. pp. 24-25
  7. ^ Rodriguez-Ortega, 2005
    Sarris, 1966. p. 13
  8. ^ Weinberg, 1967. p. 27, p. 30
  9. ^ Barson, 2014
    Sarris, 1966. p. 13
  10. ^ Baxter, 1971. pp. 36-37
  11. ^ Weinberg, 1967. pp. 30-31, 96: ..."catapulted him into overnight fame as a director."
  12. ^ Sarris, 1966. p. 13
  13. ^ Baxter, 1971. pp. 37, 43
  14. ^ Jay Robert Nash (1981). Almanac of World Crime. Anchor Press/Doubleday. pp. 145–146. ISBN 9780385150033.
  15. ^ Rodriguez-Ortega, 2005.
    Sarris, 1966. p. 13
  16. ^ Rodriguez-Ortega, 2005.
    Axmaker, 2010.
    Sarris, 1966. p. 15
  17. ^ Time,
  18. ^ Baxter, 1971. pp. 43-44
  19. ^ Weinberg, 1967. p. 34
  20. ^ a b Baxter, 1971. p. 43
  21. ^ (PDF). Archived from the original on July 16, 2011. Retrieved August 19, 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  22. ^ Axmater, 2010.
    Film Sufi, 2013.
    Rodriguez-Ortega, 2005
  23. ^ Axmaker, 2010: "A tale of loyalty and love in a violent world."
    Sarris, 1966. pp. 15-16
  24. ^ Baxter, 1971. p. 38
  25. ^ Sarris, 1966. pp. 15-16: "... steers clear of sociological implications of his material. ... " and "law and order ... never related to society but rather to an implacable Fate ..."
  26. ^ Jeanne and Ford, 1965. in Weinberg, 1967. p. 211: Characters "moved ... by extreme violence" as one finds in "the heroes of antiquity [where] fate destines them to the worst catastrophes."
  27. ^ Baxter, 1971. p. 39: "... it was not until Little Caesar and The Big House (1931) that any real attempt was made by Hollywood to describe the brutal reality of the criminal world."
  28. ^ Kehr, Dave. "Underworld," Chicago Reader, accessed October 11, 2010.
  29. ^ Siegel, Scott, & Siegel, Barbara (2004). The Encyclopedia of Hollywood. 2nd edition. Checkmark Books. p. 178. ISBN 0-8160-4622-0
  30. ^ Weinberg, 1967. p. 34: "... the [gangster] genre ... so eloquently established."

Sources

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Underworld (1927 film).

August 21, 2023
underworld, 1927, film, other, uses, underworld, disambiguation, underworld, also, released, paying, penalty, 1927, american, silent, crime, film, directed, josef, sternberg, starring, clive, brook, evelyn, brent, george, bancroft, film, launched, sternberg, e. For other uses see Underworld disambiguation Underworld also released as Paying the Penalty is a 1927 American silent crime film directed by Josef von Sternberg 1 and starring Clive Brook Evelyn Brent and George Bancroft The film launched Sternberg s eight year collaboration with Paramount Pictures with whom he would produce his seven films with actress Marlene Dietrich Journalist and screenwriter Ben Hecht won an Academy Award for Best Original Story 2 UnderworldFilm posterDirected byJosef von SternbergWritten byBen HechtCharles FurthmanRobert N LeeProduced byHector TurnbullB P SchulbergStarringClive BrookEvelyn BrentGeorge BancroftLarry SemonFred KohlerCinematographyBert GlennonEdited byE Lloyd SheldonDistributed byParamount PicturesRelease dateAugust 20 1927 1927 08 20 Running time80 minutesCountryUnited StatesLanguageSilent English intertitles Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Background 4 Production 5 Reception 6 Theme 7 See also 8 References 9 Sources 10 External linksPlot Edit Left Bull Weed George Bancroft in shootout with the police Right Feathers McCoy Evelyn Brent Rolls Royce Wensel Clive Brook She recognizes the seriousness of his personality 3 Boisterous gangster kingpin Bull Weed rehabilitates the down and out Rolls Royce Wensel a former lawyer who has fallen into alcoholism The two become confidants with Rolls Royce s intelligence aiding Weed s schemes but complications arise when Rolls Royce falls for Weed s girlfriend Feathers McCoy Adding to Weed s troubles are attempts by a rival gangster Buck Mulligan to muscle in on his territory Their antagonism climaxes with Weed killing Mulligan and he is imprisoned Awaiting a death sentence Rolls Royce devises an escape plan but he and Feathers face a dilemma wondering if they should elope together and leave Bull Weed to his fate Cast EditClive Brook as Rolls Royce Wensel Evelyn Brent as Feathers McCoy George Bancroft as Bull Weed Fred Kohler as Buck Mulligan Helen Lynch as Meg Mulligan s girl Larry Semon as Slippy Lewis Jerry Mandy as Paloma Alfred Allen as Judge uncredited Shep Houghton as Street Kid uncredited Andy MacLennan as One of Laughing Faces at the Ball uncredited Ida May as Laughing Woman at the Ball uncredited Karl Morse as High Collar Sam uncredited Bob Reeves as Detective at Railroad Station uncredited Julian Rivero as One of Buck s Henchmen uncredited Background EditJosef von Sternberg s brief tenure as director at M G M was terminated by mutual consent in 1925 shortly after he walked off the set of a Mae Murray vehicle The Masked Bride The film was completed by director Christy Cabanne 4 5 6 Sternberg s next project was an assignment by Charlie Chaplin United Artists to write and direct A Woman of the Sea starring Edna Purviance This episode also ended badly the film was never released and Chaplin felt compelled to destroy all film negatives As Sternberg sardonically quipped in his 1965 memoir Fun in a Chinese Laundry It was Edna Purviance s last film and nearly my own 7 8 Sternberg accepted a contract offer from Paramount Pictures in 1926 with the humbling condition that he was demoted to the role of assistant director He was quickly assigned to reshoot portions of director Frank Lloyd s Children of Divorce His work was so outstanding that the studio awarded him with a project of his own The result was his most famous film to date of his career Underworld The film would establish Sternberg in the Hollywood system 9 10 11 Production Edit George Bancroft left and Evelyn BrentUnderworld is based on a story by Ben Hecht a former Chicago crime reporter and adapted for screenplay by Robert N Lee with titles by George Marion Jr It was produced by B P Schulberg and Hector Turnbull with cinematography by Bert Glennon and edited by E Lloyd Sheldon 12 Sternberg completed Underworld in a record setting five weeks 13 The gangster role played by George Bancroft was modeled on Terrible Tommy O Connor an Irish American mobster who gunned down Chicago Police Chief Padraig O Neil in 1923 but escaped three days before execution and was never apprehended 14 Paramount Pictures initially cool towards the production predicted the film would fail Initial release was limited to only one theater the New York Paramount The studio did not provide advance publicity Writer Ben Hecht requested unsuccessfully to have his name taken off the credits due to the dismal prospects for the film Reception EditContrary to studio expectations the public response to the New York screening was so positive that Paramount arranged for round the clock showings at the Paramount Theatre to accommodate the unexpected crowds that flocked to the attraction 15 No director in the history of cinema can match Sternberg s preoccupation with the harmonies of hand signals to light a cigarette to grasp a coffee cup to fondle one s furs is for Sternberg equivalent to baring one s soul Andrew Sarris from The Films of Josef von Sternberg 1966 16 Time felt the film was realistic in some parts but disliked the Hollywood cliche of turning an evil character s heart to gold at the end 17 Underworld was well received overseas especially in France where directors Julien Duvivier and Marcel Carne were deeply impressed with Sternberg s clinical and spartan film technique Filmmaker and surrealist Luis Bunuel named Underworld as his all time favorite film Paramount overjoyed at the film s critical and commercial success bestowed a gold medal and a 10 000 bonus on Sternberg 18 19 Ben Hecht won the Academy Award for Writing in the 1st Academy Awards ceremony in 1929 for his work on this film 20 In 2008 the American Film Institute nominated this film for its Top 10 Gangster Films list 21 Theme EditSternberg has been credited with launching the gangster film genre 22 Critic Andrew Sarris cautions that Underworld is less a proto gangster film than a pre gangster film in which the criminal world of the Prohibition Era provides a backdrop for a tragic tale of a Byronic hero destroyed not by the avenging forces of law and order but by the eternal vicissitudes of love faith and falsehood 23 Journalist Ben Hecht s influence appears in the phony flower shop operation and killing of Bull Weed s archenemy florist Buck Mulligan evoking the 1922 real life murder of kingpin Dion O Bannon by the Tony Torrios mob 24 Funeral hearses also abound in the film notorious as capacious conveyances used to conceal criminal activities and personnel in Chicago Despite these contemporary references Underworld does not qualify as the first gangster film as Sternberg showed little interest in the purely gangsterish aspects of the genre nor the mechanics of mob power 3 20 Rather than invoking contemporary social forces and inequities Sternberg s Bull Weed is subject to implacable Fate much as the heroes of classical antiquity 25 26 The female companions to the outlaws are less gangster molls addicted to violent men but protagonists in their own right who induce revenge and redemption The genre would only be properly established in such film classics as Little Caesar 1930 The Public Enemy 1931 Scarface 1932 High Sierra 1941 White Heat 1949 The Asphalt Jungle 1950 and The Killing 1956 3 27 Film critic Dave Kehr writing for the Chicago Reader in 2014 rates Underworld as one of the great gangster films of the silent era 28 The film established the fundamental elements of the gangster movie a hoodlum hero ominous night shrouded city streets floozies and a blazing finale in which the cops cut down the protagonist 29 30 See also EditThe House That Shadows Built 1931 promotional film by Paramount Pre Code crime filmsReferences Edit Progressive Silent Film List Underworld silentera com Retrieved September 24 2011 The 1st Academy Awards 1929 Nominees and Winners Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Retrieved May 19 2019 a b c Sarris 1966 p 15 Sarris 1966 p 12 Baxter 1971 p 34 Weinberg 1967 pp 24 25 Rodriguez Ortega 2005Sarris 1966 p 13 Weinberg 1967 p 27 p 30 Barson 2014 Sarris 1966 p 13 Baxter 1971 pp 36 37 Weinberg 1967 pp 30 31 96 catapulted him into overnight fame as a director Sarris 1966 p 13 Baxter 1971 pp 37 43 Jay Robert Nash 1981 Almanac of World Crime Anchor Press Doubleday pp 145 146 ISBN 9780385150033 Rodriguez Ortega 2005 Sarris 1966 p 13 Rodriguez Ortega 2005 Axmaker 2010 Sarris 1966 p 15 Time New Pictures Sep 5 1927 Baxter 1971 pp 43 44 Weinberg 1967 p 34 a b Baxter 1971 p 43 AFI s 10 Top 10 Nominees PDF Archived from the original on July 16 2011 Retrieved August 19 2016 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint bot original URL status unknown link Axmater 2010 Film Sufi 2013 Rodriguez Ortega 2005 Axmaker 2010 A tale of loyalty and love in a violent world Sarris 1966 pp 15 16 Baxter 1971 p 38 Sarris 1966 pp 15 16 steers clear of sociological implications of his material and law and order never related to society but rather to an implacable Fate Jeanne and Ford 1965 in Weinberg 1967 p 211 Characters moved by extreme violence as one finds in the heroes of antiquity where fate destines them to the worst catastrophes Baxter 1971 p 39 it was not until Little Caesar and The Big House 1931 that any real attempt was made by Hollywood to describe the brutal reality of the criminal world Kehr Dave Underworld Chicago Reader accessed October 11 2010 Siegel Scott amp Siegel Barbara 2004 The Encyclopedia of Hollywood 2nd edition Checkmark Books p 178 ISBN 0 8160 4622 0 Weinberg 1967 p 34 the gangster genre so eloquently established Sources EditAxmaker Sean 2010 Silents Please Shadows Silence and Sternberg Parallax View Retrieved May 10 2018 http parallax view org 2010 08 26 shadows and silence and josef von sternberg john cassavetes and citizen mccain dvds of the week Barson Michael 2005 Josef von Sternberg Austrian American director ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA Online Retrieved May 10 2018 https www britannica com biography Josef von Sternberg Film Sufi 2013 Underworld Josef von Sternberg 1927 The Film Sufi February 12 2013 Retrieved May 10 2018 http www filmsufi com 2013 02 underworld josef von sternberg 1927 html Rodriguez Ortega Vicente 2005 Underworld Senses of Cinema Retrieved May 10 2018 http sensesofcinema com 2005 cteq underworld Sarris Andrew 1966 The Films of Josef von Sternberg Museum of Modern Art Doubleday New York New York Weinberg Herman G 1967 Josef von Sternberg A Critical Study New York Dutton External links EditUnderworld How it came to be Documentary https www youtube com watch v plj7vghnVd4 Retrieved May 12 2018 Wikimedia Commons has media related to Underworld 1927 film Underworld at IMDb Underworld at AllMovie Underworld at the TCM Movie Database Underworld at the American Film Institute Catalog Underworld Dreamland an essay by Geoffrey O Brien at the Criterion Collection Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Underworld 1927 film amp oldid 1170699657, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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